My friend is much better at shooting my revolver than I am. So I kept the friend and got rid of the revolver.

Also, it is very hard to find 7.7 x 58 Japanese ammunition. I found a box of 20 that looked like it had been on the shelf for 10 years. I gladly paid $42 dollars for it.

Always be suspicious of people who have, or crave, power. - Stanley Kubrick
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants." - Albert Camus

GinSlinger wrote:I like the thought of a blowback design, but I can't see it working in 9 Para. Maybe .380 or 9 Luger . . . .

9mm Parabellum and 9mm Luger are the same thing, if that's what you were referring to. Plenty of blowback guns in that caliber, like the HK UMP9, although not pistols, usually. Or do I misunderstand what you were saying? I understand that you can actually use blowback in any caliber, if you don't require the result to be man-portable or usable without some kind of powered assist mechanism, though.

"Millennials are lazy. They'd rather have avocado toast than cave in a man's skull with a tire iron!" -FFF

GinSlinger wrote:I like the thought of a blowback design, but I can't see it working in 9 Para. Maybe .380 or 9 Luger . . . .

9mm Parabellum and 9mm Luger are the same thing, if that's what you were referring to. Plenty of blowback guns in that caliber, like the HK UMP9, although not pistols, usually. Or do I misunderstand what you were saying? I understand that you can actually use blowback in any caliber, if you don't require the result to be man-portable or usable without some kind of powered assist mechanism, though.

As to your first point, I actually meant 9 Makarov when I wrote 9 Luger, though it was not simply mistyped, I had to look for the name of the cartridge I was thinking of. Too many 9mm out there . . . but that was a serious confusion on my part.

As to the second, I actually mean a simple blowback pistol (like a Hi-Point) that is usable and at least moderately accurate. I've fired several small caliber simple blowbacks, and they can be accurate, low cost, and easy to maintain. That's why I suspect the .380 Hi-Point is a fairly good firearm, the 9mm may be pushing it, and their .45 better swung as a club.

And yes, some cannons are simple blowback . . . but I was really thinking of walking around guns, not towed along ordinance. Though with the pace of 2nd amendment rulings lately, you never know.

Direct blowback just doesn't work that well, and certainly not in 9mm or higher. There's some goal post moving when people talk about reliability of smaller blowback designs. They are reliable considering that small low pressure rounds are notoriously unreliable in semi auto actions. It doesn't mean the same thing to say that a .32 is reliable and to say that a sig or a glock 9mm is reliable. The former may be talking about a failure every 20 rounds and the latter is talking about a failure every 10,000 rounds.

Scale straight blowback up to 9mm and you get a brick for a slide and horrific unreliability. Hi points fail to cycle and fail to feed ALL THE TIME.

In a handgun, the conventional wisdom holds that a straight blow back design is fine for smaller rounds; .22 LR, .25 ACP, .380, and 9mm Makarov.

Once you start moving to cartridges that generate pressures higher than those, you start running into functionality issues, and in order to have a blowback gun in calibers like 9mm, .40, or .45ACP the designs have to be able to withstand those pressures before the gun cycles. Hi-Point solves this problem by having guns that have over-sized slides and heavy-ass recoil springs.

Straight blowback systems work fine in sub machine guns and pistol-caliber carbines because the physical size of the firearm itself allows for bigger internal parts, so the design can incorporate a big, heavy bolt that can withstand the pressures generated by those rounds without making the gun heavy and ungainly.

Also, I'm not sure, but I think that some of the HK sub machineguns use a locking mechanism of some sort and aren't just straight up blowback designs.

In other news, I picked up the Hi-Point on Friday and put about 200 rounds through it yesterday. The gun had two failures to feed, but a squirt of oil solved that problem. I set up two Steel Challenge stages, Speed Option and Pendulum.

I need to review my times, but general impression was that I could run the stage drawing my CZ from the holster and engaging targets about as fast as I could run the stage with the Hi-Point shooting from low-ready. Part of this is due to the fact that my times to draw from a holster and hit a 10 inch plate at 10-18 yards is glacially slow, in the 1.5-1.75 second range.

Overall impression of the Hi-Point; it's cheaply made but not too bad for what it is. The trigger pull is stupidly heavy, but at least it's consistent. The grip is uncomfortable. The slide had a tendency to rub the skin of the joint where my thumb attaches to my hand. It's accurate enough for the targets I was shooting at, and the yellow and red paint they put on the sights make them fairly easy to see. Recoil is not as bad as I was expecting, but the muzzle flip makes it a little harder to track the sights.

I would like to track down a holster to jam this thing into to see how well it draws.

mediageek wrote:Also, I'm not sure, but I think that some of the HK sub machineguns use a locking mechanism of some sort and aren't just straight up blowback designs.

The MP5 and variants use a roller-delayed blowback. I mentioned the UMP specifically because that is straight blowback, IIRC.

Confession: I am absurdly fascinated by long recoil action, and if I had the space, had the mechanical ability, and lived in a state more conducive to it, I'd probably try playing around with my own long recoil designs.

"Millennials are lazy. They'd rather have avocado toast than cave in a man's skull with a tire iron!" -FFF

Turns out the holster he had wouldn't fit the Hi-Point. So I'm going to have to figure something else out by next Wednesday. Not sure what I'm going to do.

I shot it in a match yesterday.

I'll be honest, for Steel Challenge, it run ok-ish. The gun itself has bad ergos, and one of those ridiculous magazine disconnect safeties that are so loved by idiots. The sights are easy to pick up, though. More info will be incoming over at WotMG today and possibly tomorrow.

mediageek wrote:Turns out the holster he had wouldn't fit the Hi-Point. So I'm going to have to figure something else out by next Wednesday. Not sure what I'm going to do.

I shot it in a match yesterday.

I'll be honest, for Steel Challenge, it run ok-ish. The gun itself has bad ergos, and one of those ridiculous magazine disconnect safeties that are so loved by idiots. The sights are easy to pick up, though. More info will be incoming over at WotMG today and possibly tomorrow.

About 200 rounds on Sunday, and probably another 120ish yesterday, including the 75-80 rounds to shoot the match and some general after-match screwing around. Did an impromptu test shooting at an 18x24" plate at 30 yards. Ten rounds on target as fast as possible. With the Hi-Point, my splits were all above .4 seconds, with the CZ, all but one were under .4, and over the course of ten rounds ,that added up to a half-second faster with the CZ. I'd like to try it against my M&P, as that gun just seems to point and handle effortlessly, and the fiber optic front sight is ZOMG fast.

Solitudinarian wrote:I guess this goes here, but I'd like to say that I find Magpul's Angled Fore Grip absolutely fantastic when shooting at Taliban.

I think you should approach Magpul with this observation. I know I'd love to use that blurb.

"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
"Cyberpunk never really gave the government enough credit for their ability to secure a favorable prenup during the Corporate-State wedding." - Shem

Solitudinarian wrote:I guess this goes here, but I'd like to say that I find Magpul's Angled Fore Grip absolutely fantastic when shooting at Taliban.

Really? It looks ... odd. You like your hand all the way out there?

Yes, I do now. For me, it makes practicing ready-ups much easier (my elbow finally stays close to my body without being told), it makes firing in the standing and in the kneeling much more comfortable and controlled (it's hard to get more controlled than the prone), and - if you follow the idea of laying your index finger straight alongside the rail with the grip - it makes acquiring targets easier. For me. I would suggest finding someone who has one and trying it out - YMMV. I don't think my hand is all that far out there, but then I'm using an M-4. I had actually complained a couple of years ago that I needed something like this.

Eric the .5b wrote:I think you should approach Magpul with this observation. I know I'd love to use that blurb.

[Visions of freebies dancing in my head] Hmmmmmm, maybe I should...

“I have no Message to reveal. But later on––Who knows?––I might.”

“A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”

Solitudinarian wrote:I guess this goes here, but I'd like to say that I find Magpul's Angled Fore Grip absolutely fantastic when shooting at Taliban.

Really? It looks ... odd. You like your hand all the way out there?

Yes, I do now. For me, it makes practicing ready-ups much easier (my elbow finally stays close to my body without being told), it makes firing in the standing and in the kneeling much more comfortable and controlled (it's hard to get more controlled than the prone), and - if you follow the idea of laying your index finger straight alongside the rail with the grip - it makes acquiring targets easier. For me. I would suggest finding someone who has one and trying it out - YMMV. I don't think my hand is all that far out there, but then I'm using an M-4. I had actually complained a couple of years ago that I needed something like this.

Eric the .5b wrote:I think you should approach Magpul with this observation. I know I'd love to use that blurb.

[Visions of freebies dancing in my head] Hmmmmmm, maybe I should...

So, okay, when you use the M4, do you do any CQB inside structures stuff? I'm always trying to get my hand closer to the mag well because in a cqb situation, you do a lot of low ready with the rifle turned sideways and barrel down, then snap the thing up as you take the corner. I rely pretty heavily on the support hand being my fulcrum in going from low to ready. If you don't do that and keep the rifle low but still in front of you in a normal hold, it's really hard to keep your muzze from giving away your position as you move room to room.

I also worry about your ability to swing to targets in the direction of your support hand. I might try it one day, but it looks freaky.

I 've handled a couple of guns with the Magpul angled fore grip and I think it feels very natural. I've been thinking of installing one on my carbine-length AR.

I tend to stick my left hand further out on the hand guards, rather than doing the whole gripping it by the magwell method. Though that's more a result of shooting 3gun than doing defensive training. (An area I'm sadly lacking in.)

As for gripping the rifle out front, vs. gripping it near the mag well, I seem to recall hearing that there are schools of thought that advocate both methods.

Always be suspicious of people who have, or crave, power. - Stanley Kubrick
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants." - Albert Camus